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Weapons of Mass Distraction
By Guy Harrison
Some disturbing figures from the United Nations have come to light as the Iraq War intensifies. Approximately 30,000 children are dying every day during the war. This equates to an annual death rate of more than 10 million children. How can the world tolerate this blood bath? This war must end immediately so the children won't die! Right?
Wrong.
The Iraq War has nothing to do with the figures cited above. These are UN statistics for the routine slaughter-by-neglect of children around the world. Some 30,000 children die every day because they don't have clean water, enough food, or access to basic medical care. For lack of a fistful of pennies, they perish. These innocents die with clockwork regularity, both in peacetime and in wartime. Tomahawk cruise missiles don't stop it. Peace parades don't stop it. The children just keep dying. At least 200,000 of them were killed during the first week of the Iraq War, not by bombs in Iraq but by neglect in the world's impoverished nations. Somebody at CNN and BBC is not doing the math here, and the sophisticated citizens of the international community seem to be focused on a tree while missing the forest. The pro-war crowd wants to bury Saddam to make the world a better place. The anti-war crowd wants to stop the conflict because they believe life is precious. Strangely, however, no crowd at all can be found when the subject of global poverty comes up, and poverty is the biggest weapon of mass destruction the world has ever seen. The truth is that this war is irrelevant to the quality of life and outright survival of millions of the world's children who are living on the edge.
If we care about the life of a 20 year-old US Marine or an Iraqi child, then shouldn't we also care about the millions of Asian and African children who face conditions more dangerous than they do? Even with the war underway, I would rather be a soldier than a five-year-old girl in rural Somalia. Soldiers usually eat on a regular basis and if they get hurt they usually go to hospitals. Millions of children miss out on those perks. If war is hell, as General William Tecumseh Sherman said, then what do we call it when 11 million children die each year because nobody cares? I think we need to invent a new word.
Why aren't CNN and the BBC pushing the Iraq war into the background to make room for a steady stream of in-depth stories on malnutrition? After all, the body count from child hunger in 2003 will be around 6 million. It is unlikely that the Iraq War will come any where near that death toll. Why do these kids always slip under the radar? Is it because there aren't loud explosions around them? Is it because they aren't wearing uniforms?
Well, if it's the only way to get them some airtime, let's send them some uniforms, and little helmets too. Then we can attack them. A full military assault on the world's poor children might do the trick. Bomb the little tykes! Invade their villages! Maybe then the BBC and CNN will send in the cameras. Millions of people sitting in front of their televisions might suddenly be upset. Maybe politicians will deliver threatening speeches that call for action on behalf of the children. Maybe citizens will wave flags and somehow equate saving children with patriotism. Maybe some people will demand military action to save the babies. Maybe others will march in the streets waving signs and beating drums for the children.
Maybe then, finally, the world will notice the greatest tragedy of all.
Originally published in the Caymanian Compass newspaper March 26, 2002
The Measure of Our Worth
By Guy Harrison
They heard the cries but no one helped.
One terrible night back in 1964 a woman named Kitty Genovese was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death on the streets of a city. At least 38 people heard her screams for help but none of them helped her.
Psychologists called it "bystander inaction". Since the Genovese case many experiments have confirmed that bystanders are less likely to help someone if other bystanders are present. Most of us have a natural tendency to shift responsibility away from ourselves and let somebody else handle a problem.
I thought about Kitty Genovese when I read that 150 million children are malnourished and 10 million children will die this year only because they didn't get a cheap vaccination or some other such reason. Do they keep dying because we have left it to someone else to help them?
Tainted glory. We are all diminished and unfulfilled until we find a way to correct this pathetic tragedy. Humankind's true worth is chained to the suffering of children. We cannot escape it. It is a colossal failure not to care for the weakest of our kind. All of our accomplishments to date are tainted because of it. We cannot seriously imagine ourselves as noble creatures as long as we tolerate the deaths of 30,000 children per day from simple neglect. All our great works of art, our inventions, our voyages to the Moon must be judged within the context of our inability to feed millions of children. All our glorious feats are at best a counterweight that struggles to keep our guilt and self-disgust in check.
Life is cheap. Global poverty is a complex problem. You and I are not likely to find the solution to it any time soon. But while the smart people are busy figuring out how to fix the world, we can at least save a few lives in the meantime. It is safe to assume that a starving child doesn't care much for politics or logistics. They just want a chance to see tomorrow. We can give them that chance. Our help, our pennies can save lives.
We often hear the sad statement that life is cheap. But perhaps we should not react negatively to it. Instead, draw encouragement from the fact that life really is cheap these days. A few dollars can give a child the chance to grow up to be a teenager and maybe even an adult. We, the working class drones of the wealthy nations, possess the power to save human lives. The trickle of our donated pocket change becomes a raging river of hope and salvation by the time it reaches a suffering child.
You have heard the cries. Will you help?
This commentary was originally published in the Caymanian Compass on 7 May, 2002.
Preventable, not inevitable
The world's children die at a rate of 11 million per year. UNICEF is trying to help.
By Guy Harrison
Babies do not salute flags. Babies do not worship gods. Babies do not belong to political parties. Babies do not see humankind as a collection of competing races.
These little creatures come into the world without guilt upon them or malice within. Yet we let them die every minute of every day and it adds up to an incomprehensible mountain of death. Each year an astounding 11 million children die of preventable causes. Of these doomed children, eight million are babies. These are figures contained in an important report released this month by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO). The publication coincides with their effort called Global Consultation on Child and Adolescent Health and Development.
The situation is shockingly grim and I suspect most people in relatively wealthy societies like ours have no clue as to how horrible and immoral these deaths are. For lack of mere pennies, hundreds of thousands of babies never see the age of two. The media spotlight shines almost exclusively on dramatic events such as famines, wars and earthquakes. Meanwhile, somewhere off the radar screen is a daily routine that makes children suffer painful deaths and leave behind loving parents with shattered lives and broken hearts.
Malnutrition is one of history's greatest killers and it continues to wreak havoc today. Strangely, however, we do not think of it in the same urgent that way we view much less lethal problems like AIDS or terrorism. An interesting detail in this new report is that lack of food is not the main cause of malnutrition. Common and frequent illnesses that could be prevented are the culprit. Sick children eat less. Their bodies do not absorb nutrients properly. Vomiting and diarrhea drain away needed nutrients. For very small amounts of money per child, most common illnesses can be prevented or effectively treated.
The percentages of malnourished children are tragically high in some countries. The report says 48 percent of all children in Bangladesh and Afghanistan suffer from malnutrition. Nepal, India and Ethiopia are at 47 percent. Cambodia and Yemen are high as well at 46 percent.
It is important to keep in mind that the first three years of life are a crucial developmental period and even if children survive malnutrition they can be permanently affected in some way, including the possibility of diminished brainpower.
UNICEF is a nonprofit organization created by the United Nations in 1946 to help children and women recover in the aftermath of World War II. Its mission was later broadened to address the urgent needs of children throughout the developing world. Today UNICEF is present in more than 160 countries, helping children improve their chances of survival and grow to adulthood in health, peace and dignity.
UNICEF generates its entire income from the voluntary donations of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. I urge everyone in the Cayman Islands to learn more about UNICEF's efforts. Visit their website at www.unicef.org. Those without convenient access to the Internet may phone me (949-5111 ext. 222) and I will mail you a packet of information.
Once you understand the outrageous hardships many millions of children face around the world, and you see how UNICEF is helping, I hope you will make a donation. This can be done online or by mail. Do not underestimate the power of your pennies.
According to UNICEF, two dollars can buy the following: 66 pencils for school children; enough high-dose vitamin A to protect 66 toddlers for one year against disease and blindness from vitamin A deficiency; Six bottles of medicine to treat malaria, a leading killer of children in many countries; or enough oral rehydration salts to save 40 children from becoming dangerously dehydrated from diarrhea. Measles vaccinations cost just 26 cents per dose, according to the World Health Organization. Right now 600,000 children die from measles each year.
Surely we can do better than look the other way while 11 million children die each year. We can find 26 cents to keep a baby from dying of measles. Surely we can find a few dollars to enable a little girl to one day become a woman. Surely we care.
Don't we?
This essay was originally published in the Caymanian Compass newspaper on March 22, 2002.
The Lost World
By Guy P. Harrison
The traveler finds magnificent beauty throughout this world: Lions mating half-hidden in African grass, the Taj Mahal's white marble against blue sky, and the dance of young Fijians. But the honest traveler also discovers horror, because open eyes always find the poorest of the poor: The trembling outstretched hand of a Nairobi beggar, the Indian boy's body that has become food for the dogs, and the old island woman with strong eyes but weak limbs. These visions taint our Earth's beauty, and they haunt me.
There is incredible pain in our world. We, the one-fifth of the population born into wealthy societies, owe something to the tens of millions condemned to struggle in developing countries. Those who built up our societies did so in part by robbing the predecessors of those in trouble now. The global maldistribution of wealth did not occur simply because some people were smarter that others. It happened primarily because of environmental advantages, genocide, slavery, and theft. And, more to the point, our extravagant lifestyles today help keep the poor trapped in their nightmare.
If morality is not reason enough, however, we can justify helping the world's poor for selfish reasons as well. Rapidly growing numbers of poor people guarantee social instability and the eventual crash of the ecosystem everyone depends on the eat, drink, and breathe.
Although wars, natural disasters, and acute famines make headlines, they are less brutal than the grinding murder called poverty. Each day 40,000 children die of hunger or preventable diseases. Nearly half the human population lives in miserable poverty. About a billion are severely malnourished. Every 24 hours 50,000 people die because they don't have clean drinking water.
These numbers obliterate any claim to decency we might imagine for ourselves. Remember that these lost lives, measured in millions, begin as individuals. Pain is felt. Tears fall. We must admit that something terrible is going on, not in a faraway land but right here at home, on Earth.
As the Allies liberated many of Europe's death camps near the end of World War II, people who lived near the camps were sometimes forced to view piles of corpses. The townspeople were made to confront the gruesome product of a system they either supported or ignored. Half a century later, it is easy to assume moral superiority and condemn those who quietly accepted Hitler's murder-factories. But what if, just like the townspeople, someone came for you and I one day? What if we were marched before a mountain of starved babies? How might we explain our support or indifference to the system that murdered them?
In the time it took you to read this, 70 children died. They are gone forever because you and I didn't do enough to save them.
Sleep well tonight. I won't.
This essay was originally published in the Caymanian Compass newspaper
A World
of Our Making
Another famine in Africa
By Guy Harrison
Starvation inflicts a cruel death. It devours from the inside out, seemingly killing its victims long before they stop walking. For those of us who live in so-cieties of exercise bikes and all-you-can eat specials, famine is almost in-comprehensible. That is why we cringe and shake our heads in disbelief when CNN and the BBC show us images of the latest slow-motion slaughter in Af-rica. How does this happen? We are a species of so much wealth, beauty and ability. We have touched the Moon and split the atom. We produced Michel-angelo and Beethoven. Yet, right now, a mother in Sudan is pushing leaves into the mouth of her baby, in the hope that it will live one more hour. How can such hell exist in a world so wonderful? What caused this famine? Was it Nature? The wrath of some God? Are the starving Sudanese somehow too stu-pid to feed themselves? Why do they die?
The current crisis in Sudan threatens more than two million with starvation. The United Nations World Food Program has responded with the largest aid operation in history, delivering some 10,000 tons of food per month. People and governments of rich nations are giving millions of dollars to help, evidence that they are not completely disconnected from the poor of Earth. But is it enough to give money? Shouldn't we also attempt to confront, and change, the circumstances which make this happen over and over? If the suffering of all those still-breathing corpses in Africa is a result of the world we help to make, then aren't we obligated to change it?
Like the famines of recent years in Ethiopia and Somalia, Sudan's crisis is not primarily a result of unfavorable climate or inadequate agricultural meth-ods. Violence and our belief in divisions are behind it.
Violence equals pain. Sudan has been fighting an off-and-on civil war since the 1950s. The names of the groups involved sometimes change but the bullets remain the same. The insane war (is there any other kind?) reportedly costs the poor nation $1 million a day. Many of the rebel leaders live securely in neighboring countries while the heads of government enjoy relative safety in northern Sudan. This leaves southern Sudan to serve as a battlefield and its farmers to act as targets. All sides in this war have attacked and looted vil-lages at one time or another. It is difficult to grow crops when someone keeps burning them and shooting at you.
"The Sudanese shouldn't need food assistance. They have coping mechanisms that are simply amazing," said a relief worker, quoted in an Associated Press report. "They know how to deal with floods, they know how to deal with droughts, but what they can't deal with is war."
"The only way to end this is to put an end to the war," echoed a leader of the relief in a Time report.
Do not write off Sudan as some violent anomaly. Sudan belongs to the world we have made. From 1990 to 1997, we have averaged 40 armed conflicts per year, according to the Worldwatch Institute. Our species currently spends some billion per year to fight and prepare for wars. All of this military spending has made the world a very dangerous place for civilians, as they are increasingly the victims of war. In World War II, for example, 67 percent of all deaths were civilians. That number has climbed steadily. In the 1990s, civilians have accounted for 90 percent of all war deaths (Worldwatch Institute). Countries such as the US, Russia, China, Iran, South Africa, France, Great Britain and oth-ers have flooded the world with weap-ons, and they have done it primarily for profit. This global arms market, which deals in everything from missiles to bayonets, guarantees that troubled nations such as Sudan will have their challenges compounded. Why talk to an enemy when you've just loaded your new AK-47? Why consider compromise when you just accepted delivery of an armored personnel carrier?
Violence, however, is not the only reason that Sudan is a nightmare.
IMAGINARY LINES. Division, more than anything, is the real culprit behind disasters such as Sudan's famine. It simply would not happen in a world without divisions on our maps and in our minds. The artificial splits of races, religions and nations consistently set the stage for death's visit throughout the world. Sudan's civil war includes elements of all three. The government is led by Islamic fundamentalists, who consider themselves to be Arabs. They want Sudan to be a strict Muslim nation. The rebels, who consider themselves to be black, have different ideas. Southern Sudan is made up mostly of Christians and followers of traditional African beliefs. Outside governments such as Iran and the US have backed different side in the struggle. So a clash of politics, race and religion is the real reason we keep seeing all these ghosts wandering the earth, trying to stay one step ahead of death. Still, the rest of the world should be able to see past the petty differences that have ripped apart Sudan, right? Apparently not. We see, we care, but something prevents a commitment by the wealthy nations to end the cycle of acute famines, not to mention the less dramatic but more deadly chronic hunger which is always present. The obstacle likely is the belief that they are not "us" and we are not "them". We live in a world fiercely loyal to its archaic divisions. Different nations, different religions and different races mean different pri-orities.
It's a troubling thought, but I sometimes wonder if the wealthy nations of North America and western Europe would respond differently to a severe fam-ine if the victims "looked more like" the people who rule those countries. Imagine withered white-skinned babies, dying by the thousands on CNN and the BBC. Would there be more concern, more action? I wonder. Several psychological studies on altruism concluded that we are more likely to help others if they are "similar" to ourselves. This shouldn't be a problem, however, because we are all similar to one another. Right? Wrong. It is the human way to magnify minor differences and ignore significant similarities. Every generation teaches its children to believe in harmful divisions. Without much thought, we continue to embrace the tradition of a world divided by race, religion and nations. And each generation pays a steep price for it.
Ask an anthropologist about race and you will learn that it is an invalid concept. Race is a cultural creation, not a physical reality. The human species is far too genetically blended to draw any credible borders between populations. Race is a burden we have imposed upon ourselves and therefore there is realistic hope that we can rid ourselves of it.
Organized religion has divided people and stirred up violence for thousands of years. Sudan is just another footnote to that sad story. Ask ten people about a passage in the Koran or the Bible and you likely will hear ten unique answers. Theological debates are fine, but taking it as far as murder is ridiculous. Any religion that justifies killing people in the name of some invisible god is a superstition we can do without. Most faiths offer wisdom and inspiration, but when used to turn human against human they would be best left alone.
If Sudan was made a state or province of a wealthy nation today, then there would be no famine in Sudan tomorrow. But because of borders millions may starve this year. Giving or withholding compassion and positive action based upon an address or the geography of birth is ludicrous. Is it logical to love and appreciate one small piece of a beautiful painting while ignoring the masterpiece in its entirety? When we define our world by borders we restrict our love for all the Earth and all its people. As a result, we live lives tragically stunted in one way or another. A divided world also makes it easier to avoid the responsibility of helping those most in need.
Beyond the shallow horizons of nations, religions and races await the love and responsibilities befitting a species of our ability. Remember the scenes of starvation in Sudan the next time you salute a flag, call yourself a color or cast a condescending eye at a religious rival. Those starving children ride the jagged edge of the divisions we uphold.
If we care about Sudan, if we sincerely wish to end the cycle of famines, then the next moves are obvious. We must pursue peace everywhere and begin to accept our world as one.
Read it and weep
An estimated 250 million people have died of hunger-related causes in the past 25 years. That is approximately ten million each year. Most victims are infants and small children (Paul Ehrlich, The Stork and the Plow).
Nearly one billion people live in absolute poverty, defined as being unable to buy enough food to maintain health or perform a job (Paul Erlich, The Population Explosion).
More money flows out of impoverished nations (interest payments, capital flight, repatriated profits, royalties, etc.) than comes in through international aid (Global Issues 1997-98).
The assets of the world's 358 billionaires are greater than the combined in-comes of the world's poorest countries, which contain 45 percent of the world's people (Associated Press, 27/7/98).
Americans spend billions of dollars each year on plants and gardening supplies. They also spend billions of dollars on dog and cat food. Pet obesity is a growing problem in the US, according to a CNN report.
More than nine million children under the age of five die each year from causes that could have been prevented with antibiotics and inoculations.
Polluted drinking water kills 50,000 people every day.
Since 1968, more than 200 million people, mostly children, have died from hunger and hunger-related diseases.
This essay was originally published in the Caymanian Compass newsaper (7 August, 1998) during one of Sudan's famines.
Tear down the walls
and start loving the world
By Guy Harrison
We do not care.
There can be no other conclusion. People suffer and die in the world's poorest nations every moment of every day, and it could stop if we in the wealthy societies cared. Forget for the moment all those headlines about wars, terrorism and natural disasters. They may grab our attention but these killers take a minor toll compared to the relentless grind of poverty. Real poverty is a quiet violence that kills with more ruthless efficiency than any conventional war, earthquake or flood ever could.
The world's economic output for the year 2000 was 42 trillion dollars, up from 31 trillion in 1990 (OECD), yet somehow there still is just not enough to go around as nearly half the human population, 2.8 billion people, struggle to survive on two dollars per day or less (World Bank). We may have probed the cold blackness of space and we may have peered into the DNA that makes us, but still we cannot end poverty. Why?
Out of the world's six billion people, 1.1 billion are undernourished and underweight (UN FAO). Most shocking of all are the deaths of more than 30,000 children every day in the developing world (UNICEF). They die from malnutrition and diseases that would be easily prevented or cured elsewhere.
Day after day, week after week, year after year, it just keeps happening. It is ironic that we jump to condemn the mass killings of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, yet we support a system of global death that no murderous maniac could ever have engineered. The citizens of wealthy nations may shake their heads in sincere discomfort when confronted by television images of children with distended bellies, swollen by the emptiness of hunger, but the uncomfortable moment soon passes and it's back to life in the plastic bubble, back to electing leaders that won't change the status quo. We need to ask ourselves why this happens. Why do we not rush to the side of our neighbors in need? Why do we not demand change?
Perhaps the world's poor suffer without end because we do not really think of them as our neighbors. Simple geographic distance plays some role in our lack of action and guilt, but the primary reason is most likely psychological distance. Those 30,000 children that die every 24 hours seem so far away for a very specific reason: They are not us. The false walls of nations, religion, and race provide us with an excuse to avoid meaningful action. These fabricated barriers allow us to avoid a sense of urgency about what is obviously the most urgent crisis in the world.
Nations. Nations are not much more than high-tech tribes that offer shortcuts to thinking. They encourage people to feel superior, or inferior, to people they have never met. They also help determine whom we are supposed to care about and whom we are not supposed to care about.
The state of Hawaii is a significant distance from Washington D.C., capital of the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation. If those islands were somehow hit by famine, however, the US government would be spoon-feeding apple pie to every citizen there within two hours. Why? It is because they are Americans. Why isn't the US government feeding and immunizing every one of those children that face death daily in Africa and Asia? Because they are not Americans. Think about it, compassion travels at light speed within national borders, beyond them, however, it stops cold.
Remember that our revered national borders are not a natural feature of this planet. We chose to scribble them upon the Earth and a price is paid for this when they help to push neighbors from our thoughts. Humankind will become a lot closer when nations cease to be all-powerful definitions of individuals and become mere geographic descriptions with no more significance than a state or town within a country.
Race. We might instantly feel a kinship and responsibility to people everywhere if only we would learn and accept what science has already discovered about the human species. All humans share a common origin. The genetic differences between any two humans on Earth are relatively small.
Despite centuries of trying very hard, no one has yet been able to prove that "race" correlates with intelligence or morality at the genetic level. In fact, "races" are not even valid biological categories, according to anthropologists. Still we obsess over superficial variations such as skin color and nose shape, while ignoring the many profound things we share in common. Those in the rich world who think they are of a different "race" from the billion that sleep with hunger each night believe this only because they have been led astray by incorrect assumptions and lies. Keep calling yourself a color if you must, but don't deny that using illogical labels helps to drive a destructive wedge between us.
Religions. Religions do many things to help the poor, but unfortunately they do even more to encourage neglect of the poor. Religions strongly reinforce the "us" and "them" mentality. An attitude of love and responsibility for all people is discouraged when a religion tells its followers that they are right and everyone else is wrong. It may not be by design but the sad reality is that when believers become convinced that they possess the one and only truth, a distance grows between them and those without this assumed truth. It is obvious that Christians, Hindus, Jews or Muslims tend to care about the welfare of those within their respective religion at least a little more than those outside of it. Like the concepts of races and nations, religion creates psychological distance between people, and the poorest of the poor pay a steep price for that distance.
We can have a world where everyone eats and everyone has access to basic health care, but it won't come easily. There are the huge challenges of population growth and environmental destruction that must be answered, for example. The first step, however, is for each one of us to stop thinking in ways that help us to sleep soundly while babies die.
We do not necessarily need to abandon our beloved concepts of nations, religions and races. But it seems clear that we need to loosen their grip upon our minds so that we can reach out and connect with all of the human family. If clinging to these small fractions of humanity gives you comfort, then try to imagine the potential warmth, power and inspiration that awaits a true connection with six billion sisters and brothers spread across the planet.
Let this come to pass. Let us be free to find the compassion that lies somewhere within all of us and then, maybe, the children will suffer no more.
This essay was originally published in the Caymanian Compass newspaper on May 11, 2001.
Thank you for your time. Please give.
Note: These commentaries represent the opinions of Guy Harrison, and may or may not reflect the views of other members of Cayman Loves Children.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil
is for good people to do nothing."
Edmund Burke
Credit for photo of Sudan child: Associated Press
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